Friday night’s Rigoletto at the Metropolitan Opera revealed once again a predictable dissonance between the performances on stage and Michael Mayer’s production.
Oh, that slippery Don Giovanni—so elusive, so chaotic, so open to no end of interpretation!
Claus Guth, in a staging of Handel’s Orlando for Theater an der Wien, decided to revisit a PTSD theme.
Odyssey Opera’s Ägyptische Helena was a beautifully executed production of a flawed opera.
The sexiest moment on Broadway this season features a 73-year-old man and a single button.
Legrenzi married the quirky libretto to a score of transcendental beauty.
Stefan Vinke’s Siegfried was not so much brawny and terrestrial, but heady and mercurial
Sunday’s “Rising Stars in Concert”, featuring the Ryan Opera Center ensemble and members of the Lyric Opera Orchestra, was a stirring and entertainingly musical afternoon.
Zelmira, a work of 1822, was the last of the eight operas Rossini composed for the Teatro San Carlo in Naples, then the largest opera house in Italy—perhaps in Europe.
Ivo van Hove really seems to be everywhere lately.
Michael Mayer‘s production of La traviata at the Met is so timid, so devoid of insight, so cynically pandering and gaudy that I hardly feel like it even matters what I think of the performances of the current cast.
One needs liberty in order to be a libertine.
Trial by Jury was the operetta chosen by Lamplighters Music Theatre, the San Francisco-based Gilbert & Sullivan company, to close their 66th season.
We owe director John Doyle and Classic Stage Company a debt of gratitude for bringing Blitzstein’s The Cradle Will Rock—warts and all—to the stage.
The finals on Sunday seemed a bit like the modern-day operatic equivalent of the Roman colosseum.
At the Metropolitan Opera on Saturday night, Mozart’s opera never sounded fresher, a superstar cast shining new light on one of the composer’s all-too-seldom-performed scores.
Frankly, I can’t imagine there’s a future for I Married an Angel.
Die Walküre crystallizes the cycle’s questions, ideas, and stakes.
Saturday night, Lyric Opera of Chicago gave us a wonderful evening of vocalism in honoring Renée Fleming’s 25th anniversary at Lyric.
Kiss Me Kate is a sophisticated soufflé of a show: a comedy of manners, requiring effortless verve and elegance in the playing.
Amore Opera, one of New York’s smaller opera companies, is presenting the first local run of Dinorah, ou le Pardon de Ploërmel since before the war.
Teatro Real continued their 200 years’ celebration by premiering a piece that they have never done before, Francesco Cavalli’s opera La Calisto.
I’ve never liked the term “crossover.”
Soprano Iulia Isaev proved to be in just about every way a lovely Tosca.
Tell us: What’s your favorite Verdi performance?
Hasten thee to feed another quarter of conversation for The Talk of the Town!
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